The Product

The ABIT AN8 SLI featuring Q-OTES stands out from conventional chipset cooling solutions. Silent OTES uses ABIT designed heatpipe technology to transfer unwanted heat from the North Bridge to the fins of the Collection Module. From there, heat is exhausted outside of the case by air flowing from the CPU fan. The result, a totally silent platform offering excellent cooling efficiency while utilizing the existing CPU fan, ultimately providing enhanced performance, stability and a quieter experience for the end user.

Up Close & Personal

Q-OTES (Quiet-Outside Thermal Exhaust System) is ABIT's answer to providing thermal cooling for the AN8 SLI nForce4 chipset. The low profile heat sink is ideal for SLI configurations. This allows extra video card clearance that can be a problem with some nF4 motherboard solutions.

Key Features

Let's go a bit more in detail on the ABIT Q-OTES cooling solution on the AN8 SLI board. The focus will be on the key features of this silent cooling system that ABIT has designed.

The Q-OTES sink is approximately the same height as the PCI-Express port which again keep compatibility issues to a minimum. The heatpipe is mandrel bent to specifications, allowing a very functional cooling system without pipe clutter and clearance issues.

The 100% copper tubing is routed around component area's of the mother board allowing exotic and many aftermarket CPU coolers and water block compatibility. The only thing I see that might be a little tricky is replacing the CMOS battery in a fully functional rig. Having been said I don't know if that will ever be an issue, as in most cases these batteries last longer than the 2-3 year life expectancy of an entire rig anyway.

ABIT has opted for this AN8 SLI mainboard, what we call a silent cooling method that effectively moves heat away from the chipset. Using a copper heatpipe, they relocated the heatsink to where the printer port would normally reside, on the rear panel. This leads away the heat from the chipset to the rear of the mainboard and out of the computer case.

The Silent Q-OTES solution used by ABIT allows them to maintain a low profile heatsink for the chipset that does not require active cooling. Since the active cooling was introduced some years ago with high performance chipset, this is by far the first time that we see the passive cooling coming back to chipset cooling by means of a heatpipe solution.

As with all heatpipe designs the heat that is produced, gets drawn away from the initial source and then cooled down at another spot. By applying this technology you can spread the heat at places that are more appropriate to facilitate rapid cooling. ABIT used this technique to remove the heat from the center of the mainboard and PC towards the outlet. This way the heat will not accumulate within the computer case but will disseminate outside of the chassis.

To accomplish this ABIT is using a copper radiator. As the above image shows, again no fans are used to cool down the radiator. The copper radiator is ideal for getting the job done without any external air blowing on and flowing through it. This truly is a silent cooling solution that gets the job done.